9 New Audiobooks for Memorial Day Listening

Hello holiday weekend! I'm looking forward to spending time with friends and family at a traditional Memorial Day cookout. But before Monday rolls around, I plan to spend some quality time with my current audiobook while I put the deck in order, finish the yard work, and busy myself in the kitchen. When I'm caught up in a good story performed by a good narrator, I'm almost sorry to see the end of my chores--almost!

The 9 audiobooks featured today are brand new this week, released just in time to help you get ready for your own holiday celebrations. Which audiobook is calling to you?

• Memorial Day weekend is the official start of summer, and you can get in the mood by listening to Wendy Wax’s Best Beach Ever (Penguin Audio; 12 hr, 17 min), part of the Ten Beach Road series set in Florida. Amy Rubinate has narrated the entire series, capturing the personalities and strong friendships of five very different women, whom fans have come to love.
• Diversify your listening list with Sandhya Menon’s From Twinkle, with Love (Simon & Schuster; 9 hr, 32 min), a contemporary young adult rom-com about a teenage filmmaker who learns that dreams really do come true, especially when she opens her eyes (and heart) to all possibilities. Narrators Soneela Nankani and Vikas Adam are a listener’s dream team for this epistolary novel.
• Randall Klein’s Little Disasters (Penguin Audio; 13 hr, 20 min) is about two sets of first-time parents who form a strong friendship in the days after their children’s births. Superb narrators Kirby Heyborne and Mark Deakins share the performance of this story of love, secrets, marriage, and heartbreak told from the men’s points of view as they navigate their first year of fatherhood.

• It seems that everyone is talking about Claire Legrand’s Furyborn (Listening Library; 17 hr, 24 min), a young adult fantasy involving a female bounty hunter and heroic queen who are separated by a thousand years. Narrator Fiona Hardingham is an experienced speculative fiction narrator and should be an excellent match for this action-packed story.
• Caryl Phillips’s novel A View of the Empire at Sunset (Blackstone Audio; 7 hr, 32 min) is based on the life of author Jean Rhys, whose The Wide Saragossa Sea imagined the story of the first Mrs. Rochester from the classic Jane Eyre. (Phew! Did you follow that?) Justine Eyre, one of my go-to narrators, performs this audiobook, which explores Rhy’s life in the context of the changing British Empire during the early 20th century.
• Fans of classic horror / paranormal can rejoice! Will Patton was tapped to perform Stephen King’s latest, The Outsider (Simon & Schuster Audio, 18 hr, 39 min), about the investigation of the brutal murder of an 11-year-old boy. While I won’t be listening to this dark, disturbing mystery (*shudder*), I wholeheartedly recommend Patton as a master narrator.

• History buffs are familiar with Antonia Fraser’s well-researched, accessible biographies, and Mary Queen of Scots (Tantor Audio; 25 hr, 2 min) looks like another winner. Narrator Anne Flosnik is no stranger to nonfiction and is known for her ability to voice a variety of accents, a much needed skill for this true story of a woman who once thought she’d be queen of three countries.
• Everyone knows the story of Cinderella, but what do you know about her so-called evil stepmother? Danielle Teller’s All the Ever Afters (HarperAudio; 10 hr, 50 min) sets the record straight by giving us the inside scoop on how a poor girl named Agnes eventually became Cinderella’s guardian. Narrator Jane Copland’s expressive, lively delivery is sure to be a great match for this fairy tale retelling.
• No matter what side of the aisle you’re on, you’ll find much to admire and think about in Senator John McCain’s The Restless Wave (Simon & Schuster Audio; 14 hr, 15 min), his final look at his long service to our country. The memoir focuses heavily on the last 10 years and is sensitively read by actor Beau Bridges as well as by the author himself. Keep the tissues handy.